Fall 2008, Thursday 5:00pm-7:50pm

1. Description of Course

To explain a phenomenon, biologists often appeal to the responsible mechanism. Over the past 15 years, philosophers of science have begun to analyze what mechanisms and mechanistic explanations are, how scientists represent and reason about mechanisms, the strategies and tools employed in discovering mechanisms, how accounts of mechanisms are generalized from model systems, ways in which mechanistic accounts are both reductionistic and holistic, and how mathematical modeling is used to understand mechanisms. The resulting research project has been labeled "the new mechanistic philosophy of science." We will be exploring these topics by considering papers by leading proponents of the new mechanism and examining research in biology and related disciplines that have provided the models for mechanistic accounts.

2. Course Requirements

All participants are expected to do the assigned reading and to attend all the seminar sessions. There are two options for students taking this seminar for grades:

A. Those students without significant background in philosophy of science may take take the seminar as a regular course. This will require writing weekly discussion comments and three papers between 1,200 and 1,800 words based on the material we cover in class. The discussion comments, involving a paragraph commenting or raising a question about a major point in the assigned reading, must be submitted to the email list (see below) by 11 AM prior to each seminar session. The three papers will be due on October 17, November 14, and December 8--these dates do not correspond to seminar dates. They should be submitted electronically in Word to papers@mechanism.ucsd.edu

B. Those students with significant background in philosophy of science are encouraged to pursue the research option. This option will be directed toward preparing a paper to be submitted for publication. This will require picking a topic by the beginning of the course, leading a seminar session on relevant readings, and then presenting their own paper later in the seminar.

3. Texts

All of the reading assignments can be found on the web. Readings which are copy-projected are only available on a password controlled portion of the course website. The userid and password for this portion of the website are both mechanism. See the schedule of classes and readings below.

4. Email List

There is an email list for this seminar: mechanism@mechanism.ucsd.edu. It is required that you subscribe to this list. Do it IMMEDIATELY. You can always unsubscribe later if you drop the course. The purpose of the list is twofold--to enable me to communicate information about upcoming seminar sessions and to allow members of the seminar to raise questions or engage in discussion outside of the seminar. Initially the list will be unmoderated, which will enable all (but only) subscribers to send email to the list. (You will need to send email from the address you use to register for the list.) If this is abused, we will need to move to a moderated list.

To subscribe, you simply need to send an email message to the following address: mechanism-subscribe@mechanism.ucsd.edu. After you send the subscribe request, you will receive a reply that will ask you to confirm your request. Follow the directions in this message to confirm your subscription. If you later want to remove yourself from this list, send email to mechanism-unsubscribe@mechanism.ucsd.edu.

5. Schedule of Classes and Readings

The following schedule is subject to revision, especially in light of interests from the seminar. It does, though, provide a relatively accurate account of what we will cover and the reading that will be required.